Hurley was my photographer's assistant last week on some landscape work. There's paw prints on all my glass, he scared away all the grey herons and he ate my chamois. But he had a lot of fun so it was worth it. Here he is having a moment by Spelga Dam.
T
Up next in personal projects week…. an animation for Duke Special's song 'Freewheel'.
This is a few years old now, but I wanted to include it on the blog because my work with Duke Special has been, and is still, an important part of what I do. I've been collaborating with Gary at Sparks for seven years now, creating album covers, merchandise, books, and anything else that makes up the strange and magical world of Duke Special.
This was my first experiment with animation. I literally had no clue what I was doing when I started and I didn't know what hard work was until I encountered cel animation - I'm not sure I'll be doing it again anytime soon. Hats off to all you full-time animators out there.
This piece was a collaboration with many others, including Sparks (who hand water-coloured every cel) and director Ryan Suffern. My job was to create the world of the bears and hand draw each frame. It's a million miles away from the slickness of Pixar, but hopefully it has a kind of crude charm : )
Here's my other attempt at animation, also for Duke (it has an even cruder charm ; ) Warning - this one has been known to make children cry!
We'll get a couple in a bear costume yet!
T
Although we have a couple of Christmas weddings this year, it’s still the slow season in wedding photography land. So we’ve been taking a little time out to catch up on some personal projects.
Before I started shooting love and marriage, I did a lot of documentary portrait and landscape photography. I still do some of this work alongside This Modern Love. One of the projects closest to my heart over the past few years has been photographing homeless men and women for Depaul Ireland. Depaul is a cross-border organisation that works with some of the most vulnerable homeless people in Ireland, including street drinkers and drug users that some other charities find it difficult to accommodate. One of the first weddings I booked was actually off the back of these photographs. I'll always remember the brave and lovely Clíodhna politely asking 'your photographs of homeless people are really good, but, er, do you perhaps have any pictures of a couple I could look at?' : )
Photographing Depaul’s service users is a challenge and a privilege. Although some of these images possess a stillness, they are nearly all caught quickly in the moment with little or no staging, and all by natural light.
I’ve met some amazing people, both staff and service users, at Depaul Ireland over the years and wanted to give a shout out to their current Red Blanket Appeal. One of our images has made it onto the billboard - keep an eye out around town.
T
